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Pointlessly spending more money than necessary probably isn't good for your health as an individual though, and arguably the push to get more people to spend mo
by SllX 9y ago
Pointlessly spending more money than necessary probably isn't good for your health as an individual though, and arguably the push to get more people to spend more money more often isn't good for a society. It might be good for their economy, but economy ≠ society.
If you really just want to inflate the amount of money being spent, there's always room for more rent-seekers and debt collectors.
- jacobush 9y agoAlso, it may be "good for the economy" if "good" is "more money being spent". But that's too valueless for my taste. A stupid utility function. If you by "economy" mean as a metric for other utility in the society, then, spending money on stupid stuff, is just akin to digging holes and then filling them again. Only that, the holes are very elaborate. (Like perfumes or stupid shit like a metric crap ton of TVs nobody uses anyway because we are busy staring at a much smaller screen in our palm.)
- padobson 9y agospending money on stupid stuff The problem here, as with any economic ideas, is properly defining "stupid stuff". Value has to be defined on an individual basis. If someone gets more entertainment from digging holes and filling them with dirt than using their phone, then hole digging doesn't seem like such pointless endeavor. The hole digger will probably end up in better health than the phone user, too, so it's not like there endeavor is altogether pointless. Taking options away (like cash) is a bad idea if you're optimizing society around individual autonomy. We should want as many options as possible.
- jacobush 9y agoI agree, though I think we have plenty of real problems left to solve still. We are not quite at Star Trek level economy, where hole digging might make even more sense.